Manuel de falla biography of donald

Donald Macleod explores the life and work of Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla was not well suited to the role of national musical icon. He was at his happiest, living a simple, monkish existence in his spartan Granada villa; fussing over his music in pleasant isolation or enjoying the company of a few close friends. He was generous but withdrawn, quietly and devotedly religious, and had a horror of being dragged into the violent political conflicts that wracked Spain during the first half of the twentieth century. Falla’s enormous talent and unique musical voice meant he was thrust into the very centre of cultural life, despite himself. He was compelled to navigate his way alongside some of music’s most colourful and potent characters, and through momentous historical events.

Music Featured:

La Vida breve (Intermezzo from Act 1) Allegro de concierto Siete canciones populares Españolas No 7 Polo La Vida Breve (Act 2) Nancy Fabiola Herrera, mezzo-soprano (Salud) Cristina Faus, mezzo-soprano (La Abuela) Aquiles Machado, tenor (Paco) José Antonio López, baritone (Tío Sarvaor) Raquel Lojendio, soprano (Carmela) Josep Miquel Ramon, baritone (Manuel) Sequndo Falcón, flamenco (El Cantaor) Gustavo Peña, tenor (Una voz en la fraqua) El Amor Brujo: Ritual Fire Dance (arr. Falla for piano) El pan de Ronda que sabe a verdad Oración de las madres que tienen a sus hijos en brazos El corregidor y la molinera (extract) El Amor Brujo (complete) Noches en los jardines des España, III. En los jardines de la Sierra de Cordoba Siete canciones populares Españolas: No 1 El paño moruno Noches en los jardines des España, I. En el Generalife Fantasia Bética El sombrero de tres picos (Part II) Harpsichord Concerto Soneto a Córdoba El retablo de maese Pedro Psyche Homenaje “Le tombeau de Debussy” Balada de Mallorca Atlántida: La Salve en el Mar Homenajes El sombrero de tres picos (Part I)

Presented by Donald Macleod Produced in Cardiff by Chris Taylor

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The music of Spain has exercised an exotic fascination, but often in forms adapted by foreign composers. Manuel de Falla is representative of a group of Spanish composers who won international recognition. He was born in 1876 in C�diz, where he first studied, moving later to Madrid and then to Paris, but returning to Madrid when war broke out in 1914. Strongly influenced by the traditional Andalusian cante jondo, he settled in Granada, where his friends included the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. The Civil War of 1936 found de Falla neutral in the struggle, but in 1939 he moved to Buenos Aires, where he continued work on his ambitious stage-work Atl�ntida, which remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1946.

Stage Works
Manuel de Falla helped to support his family in Madrid, after a change in their fortunes, by composing zarzuelas, typically Spanish musical comedies. His first substantial stage work was the lyric drama La vida breve, completed in 1905 and first staged in Nice in 1913. The ballet El amor brujo (Love the Magician), with its ghostly story of gypsy jealousy, was first staged in Madrid two years later. The ballet El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat), reached its final form for its London production under the impresario Dyagilev in 1919. The puppet opera El retablo de maese Pedro, based on an episode in the classical Cervantes novel Don Quixote, was completed in 1922. There are popular orchestral suites from the first three of these four works.

Orchestral Music
In addition to the concert version of El amor brujo and two suites from El sombrero de tres picos made by the composer, Manuel de Falla wrote an evocatively beautiful work for solo piano and orchestra under the title Noches en los jardines de Espa�a (Nights in the Gardens of Spain) completed in 1915.

Vocal Music
In 1915 de Falla also completed his arrangement of seven popular Spanish songs, Siete canci

In the great flowering of Spanish classical music at the start of the 20th century, first Albéniz, then Granados and finally Falla brought international sophistication to a musical world on the fringe of Europe. They all spent crucial years in Paris, effectively the artistic capital of Latin Europe and the milieu of Debussy, Ravel and Dukas. And they had the genius to make thoroughly contemporary pieces out of distinctively Spanish material, giving the world a fresh perspective on their nation’s culture. Falla, although never an especially prolific composer, brought this achievement to a climax. Unlike his predecessors he was Andalucian, not Catalan. The character of southern Spanish music – flamenco and the type of Andalusian vocal folk music known as cante jondo – is integral to his creative spirit. Most dramatically it inspired El Amor brujo (‘Love, the Magician’, 1915), the powerful narrative of gypsy life which he first conceived as a theatre piece for flamenco singer, actors and chamber orchestra. There are also orchestral or ballet versions of the piece (which include songs for mezzo-soprano) which, although they soften the sound of the original, never weaken its impact. When Falla was in his early twenties, his family moved to Madrid where he studied and mixed with the Spanish musical elite. From 1900, partly to support the family, whose business was struggling, he taught piano and wrote operettas in the popular zarzuela form, none of which have survived complete. It was a short opera, La vida breve (‘Life is Short’), that made his name when it won a major national competition in 1905. Frustrated by his inability to get it staged, and encouraged by his compatriots Turina and Albéniz, Falla made the move to Paris in 1907. He stayed there until the outbreak of World War One, and became an integral part of the musical scene. He found a publisher with his Four Spanish Pieces for piano and eventually, in Nice, saw his opera produced. When he returne

Spanish composer (1876–1946)

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Falla and the second or maternal family name is Matheu.

Manuel de Falla y Matheu (Spanish pronunciation:[maˈnweldeˈfaʎa], 23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946) was a Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. He has a claim to being Spain's greatest composer of the 20th century, although the number of pieces he composed was relatively modest.

Biography

Falla was born Manuel María de los Dolores Falla y Matheu in Cádiz. He was the son of José María Falla, a Valencian, and María Jesús Matheu, from Catalonia.

In 1889 he continued his piano lessons with Alejandro Odero and learned the techniques of harmony and counterpoint from Enrique Broca. At age 15 he became interested in literature and journalism and founded the literary magazines El Burlón and El Cascabel.

Madrid

By 1900 he was living with his family in the capital, where he attended the Real Conservatorio de Música y Declamación. He studied piano with José Tragó, a colleague of Isaac Albéniz, and composition with Felip Pedrell. In 1897 he composed Melodía for cello and piano and dedicated it to Salvador Viniegra, who hosted evenings of chamber music that Falla attended. In 1899, by unanimous vote, he was awarded the first prize at the piano competition at his school of music. He premiered his first works: Romanza para violonchelo y piano, Nocturno para piano, Melodía para violonchelo y piano, Serenata andaluza para violín y piano, and Cuarteto en Sol y Mireya. That same year he started to use de with his first surname, making Manuel de Falla the name he became known as from that time on. When only the surname is used, however, the de is omitted.

In 1900 he composed his Canción pa